


the Salley Gardens

by middlemarch



Category: And Then There Were None (TV 2015), And Then There Were None - Christie
Genre: Angst, F/M, Guilt, Memories, Original Character Death(s), Romance, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 19:56:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11767233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: He'd meant to live. He'd meant her to live. Meant. Failed.





	1. Chapter 1

Vera was screaming. The sound was all around him and far away and it was all the keening he’d get, he knew that much. He was cold and heavy with it and there was water around him but no pain, just the sky pressing down and the sand pressing up, the air the slightest ribbon between them. She wasn’t saying any words and she hadn’t sounded that way when he made her come, not the first time, nor the second, before he’d left her wrapped in a sheet at the door. A shroud it could have been but it wasn’t, just the rumpled linen from the bed they’d just shared, when they had been Philip and Vera and not the two creatures against the wall. He had been attentive the second time, not careful, and she had sighed with it, pretty as she hadn’t been since he’d seen her in the train, those long legs not her greatest beauty. Was she still screaming or was it a gull, did even a bird come to this bloody, God-forsaken place, was it his soul screaming at the sight of hell? He couldn’t see much, he couldn’t lift a hand, not as he had to push back her loose chestnut hair, to hold her cheek in his palm and stroke it, it was growing quiet or maybe it was so loud there was no way to tell, no way to ask, to call her name _Vera Vera vera_. The truth. She had felt like silk, like home, like the death he wanted and he’d taken it as he gave, he had not hesitated to take her broken cry in his mouth, when she cried out as she came _Cyril, Cyril_.

It smelled like salt and copper. He was cold and he was in Africa, not the soft grey that was Dublin and mam, and there was darkness, the shadows flickering together, the grass waving as the men fell, shot silent. He was in Africa and he could not go home.


	2. On my leaning shoulder

She had pretended, for a few minutes she had pretended she was waking up next to her husband and he might lie there snoring away or he might open those drowsy dark eyes and just look at her, fond and satisfied, proud she could be so proper in the drawing room and so unabashed when they were alone, her hands reaching for him, holding him to her as he suckled at her breast, as he pressed his face to the crook of her neck while he stroked her, oh so terribly, so terribly and so beautiful with it. Vera imagined she wore a ring, thin and cheap perhaps, or studded with diamonds, and nothing else and he was proud of that too or it was nothing to him, if he heard her say his name _Philip Philip love oh_ when his hands returned to her skin after flinging her cheap brassiere to the floor. She’d pretended she got what she wanted, not the man she’d thought of once but a man who worshipped her and didn’t flinch when he saw her mouth painted red. She was talking to the judge, trying to reason with a madman, and Philip was whispering in her ear _there now, my fine dove, oh there you are and there you’ll go, acushla, ah, ah then_ and she was breathless with it as she had been when he fell upon her, his eyes honest and willing to trust her for her very faults. He had not put his hands around her neck but she would have let him, he had traced the bridge of her nose and her lips and called her a dove, a little love, and would he be there when she got there, Hugo had pushed her away but would Philip be waiting?

**Author's Note:**

> Finally finished watching this, behind a blanket because it was freaking scary, and couldn't help writing this extension of Philip's death scene. The title is from Yeats, his poem "Down by the Salley Gardens." Read it-- you won't regret it.


End file.
